Utilize Duet Enterprise 1.0 and 2.0 in parallel in enterprise architecture

Duet Enterprise supports migration scenarios in mixed SharePoint 2010 + 2013 landscape

Deployment of Duet Enterprise is a strategic addition to an organization’s existing infrastructure of SAP Business Suites and Microsoft SharePoint. One of the requirements from enterprise architecture perspective is that the investment in Duet Enterprise is future-proof. The utilization of Duet Enterprise for SAP-SharePoint interoperability must include a roadmap to follow-up on the innovations and developments in the SAP and SharePoint platforms. This is where Duet Enterprise 2.0 comes into place: the first version of Duet Enterprise supports SharePoint 2010, it’s successor supports SharePoint 2013. Duet Enterprise 2.0 is also backwards compatible, Duet Enterprise 1.0 services + BDC Models with Gateway Generic channel can be directly reused in SharePoint 2013 to interoperate via SAP NetWeaver Gateway with the SAP business suites.

In nowadays reality of many SharePoint using organizations, it is typical that for a time they have a mixed presence in their infrastructure of current SharePoint 2010 based applications, and new SharePoint 2013 developments plus migrations from SharePoint 2010. In such situations, enterprise architecture aims to utilize Duet Enterprise for SAP-SharePoint integration on both SharePoint versions, connecting to the same SAP business suites. SAP NetWeaver Gateway in its role of the central gateway to the SAP backend landscape, supports this enterprise architecture demand. The same single Gateway system can serve multiple consumers, including multiple SharePoint farms. The consequence is that investments made in Duet Enterprise 1.0 on SharePoint 2010 platform can be harvested when gradually migrating to SharePoint 2013 context with Duet Enterprise 2.0 deployed.

In our demo landscape we have this mixed landscape operational. On a SharePoint 2010 farm we have Duet Enterprise 1.0 based scenarios operational, and on a SharePoint 2013 farm the same Duet Enterprise 1.0 scenarios and also new Duet Enterprise 2.0 scenarios.

A prerequisite for this parallel SharePoint 2010 + Duet Enterprise 1.0 and SharePoint 2013 + Duet Enterprise 2.0 setup, is that the SharePoint farms must use the same SharePoint STS certificate. The reason for this is that in Duet Enterprise 1.0 scenarios, SAML is used for Single Sign-On handling. Both SharePoint 2010 as also SharePoint 2013 use the SharePoint STS certificate to sign the SAML assertion that is added to Duet Enterprise 1.0 requests originating through SharePoint Business Connectivity Service (BCS) application.

As our landscape is not a production system, I used a self-signed certificate for the SharePoint STS service applications in the 2010 plus 2013 farm. This saves us from the nuisance of having to renew the STS certificate each year. Something to be aware of is that in case of using a self-signed certificate on server A that is generated on another server B, it is also required to import on server A the internal root certificate of server B. This is required to enable server A to verify the full chain of certificates of the self-signed certificate generated on server B.